quote [ Researchers from Stanford have shown how the frigid, high-pressure atmospheres of the planets Uranus and Neptune can create a "rain" of diamonds.

The team from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory says it used an optical laser from the Matter In Extreme Conditions instrument to demonstrate how, deep within the gas giants, high pressure can bond hydrogen and carbon atoms to create nanometre-wide "diamonds" that fall through the dense atmosphere.

"Previously, researchers could only assume that the diamonds had formed," said Dominik Kraus, who is the lead author of the report and a scientist from Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf in Germany. ]